While browsing around the interwebs, I came across the fact that Frensel lenses have a great ability to focus sunlight. Naturally, I was surprised to find that such a great invention is being so under-utilized. (kind of like deck prisms which have just been "discovered" recently)
Anyhow, it turns out that these powerful lenses can be found in projection televisions, and best of all, people give these things away on Craigslist, because the TVs are broken.
A rather devilish plan came to me: why not melt aluminum cans in to small ingots? Sure, the use of these ingots would be rather limited, but you never know!
A quick trip to YouTube confirmed that things like steel could be melted with a lens about the size of a television, it has a melting point about twice that of Aluminum.
And now comes the really cool part: maybe it could be automated, an Arduino to track the sun and move the lens, a chute to feed aluminum cans, and some kind of a pot to catch the molten metal.
I like the idea of dumping the liquid in to a muffin tin, ensuring the metal comes out properly, although it could simply be poured back in to another soda can with the lid removed.
If for nothing else, the ingots could be used to save space while you gathered enough cans to take them to the recycling center.
Monday, August 15, 2011
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Liberate Your Data!
Google has announced a new project from the Data Liberation Front team that will eventually help you download all of your data from Google, making their job that much harder to keep you as a customer. That is fine and dandy, and will be lovely once completed, but what do we do in the mean time? I know that you keep weekly backups of your computer, and probably monthly backups of your on-line presence in at least one location away from your computer that is, at minimum secured from fire and water, right?
If you do; this article probably isn't for you. Being an avid user of Google, I'll show that, along with Facebook, and Firefox Bookmarks and Software Keys hiding on your machine.
Gmail:
Sorry, the options are limited here, either you set up a sync with a desktop client and copy the messages you get there, or you print all of your archived messages to PDF. Please don't print them to paper, that defeats the whole purpose of email.
Google Contacts:
This one isn't too bad, in the main Gmail window open your contacts.
Then choose More Actions > Export:
From there you will get many options for export, I choose to export all of my contacts in the Google format:
Once downloaded please rename the file from google.csv to something useful, like "contacts-export-2055-02-31.csv".
Google Docs
Open up Google Docs
Select some documents, then from the "Actions" menu, choose download.
A dialog will pop up asking you how you want to download the documents, at the top, choose the tab for All Documents, then download in any format that works for you (I choose ODT because it is an open standard that is going to be around far in to the future).
This time your export is named something appropriate, like "documents-export-2011-08-02.zip".
Facebook
Facebook isn't as nice as Google and only sometimes works, when it does, your download may take days to process; get out while you still can!
First, open your account settings:
Then select, "Download a copy" of your Facebook data.
Then, press Download twice:
Within a few days (this only works about half of the time) you will get an email telling you that your download is ready, you can then click it, login to Facebook again, and download a zip file with all of your stuff. Note that my whole Facebook probably has ten Mb of data, it isn't big by any standards, yet it still takes a long time; probably because Facebook is stuck using MySQL and PHP for half a billion users. Those MySQL databases can't handle it, so they have to have lots of redundant servers and things have started going funky recently with keeping the information in each concurrent (I've started getting notifications about the exact same message hourly recently). Get your information out before Facebook begins to have seizures and starts dumping your stuff.
Firefox Bookmarks
This isn't that big of a deal: Open your bookmarks manager, Firefox > Bookmarks > Show All Bookmarks (Ctrl + Shift + O) then from the Import and Backup dropdown choose Backup. You will get a JSON file filled with your bookmarks.
Note that recent versions of Firefox also backup locally every few weeks.
Software Keys
Use the Magical Jellybean Keyfinder free version to view the software keys on your system and save them to a text or csv file.
New: Google Takeout
This is the new technology discussed at the intro to this post, head over to google.com/takeout and choose what you want to download, eventually all Google services should appear here, but for now you get Picassa, Google Contacts, Buzz, and Google+.
If you do; this article probably isn't for you. Being an avid user of Google, I'll show that, along with Facebook, and Firefox Bookmarks and Software Keys hiding on your machine.
Gmail:
Sorry, the options are limited here, either you set up a sync with a desktop client and copy the messages you get there, or you print all of your archived messages to PDF. Please don't print them to paper, that defeats the whole purpose of email.
Google Contacts:
This one isn't too bad, in the main Gmail window open your contacts.
Once downloaded please rename the file from google.csv to something useful, like "contacts-export-2055-02-31.csv".
Google Docs
Open up Google Docs
Select some documents, then from the "Actions" menu, choose download.
A dialog will pop up asking you how you want to download the documents, at the top, choose the tab for All Documents, then download in any format that works for you (I choose ODT because it is an open standard that is going to be around far in to the future).
This time your export is named something appropriate, like "documents-export-2011-08-02.zip".
Facebook isn't as nice as Google and only sometimes works, when it does, your download may take days to process; get out while you still can!
First, open your account settings:
Then, press Download twice:
Within a few days (this only works about half of the time) you will get an email telling you that your download is ready, you can then click it, login to Facebook again, and download a zip file with all of your stuff. Note that my whole Facebook probably has ten Mb of data, it isn't big by any standards, yet it still takes a long time; probably because Facebook is stuck using MySQL and PHP for half a billion users. Those MySQL databases can't handle it, so they have to have lots of redundant servers and things have started going funky recently with keeping the information in each concurrent (I've started getting notifications about the exact same message hourly recently). Get your information out before Facebook begins to have seizures and starts dumping your stuff.
Firefox Bookmarks
This isn't that big of a deal: Open your bookmarks manager, Firefox > Bookmarks > Show All Bookmarks (Ctrl + Shift + O) then from the Import and Backup dropdown choose Backup. You will get a JSON file filled with your bookmarks.
Note that recent versions of Firefox also backup locally every few weeks.
Software Keys
Use the Magical Jellybean Keyfinder free version to view the software keys on your system and save them to a text or csv file.
New: Google Takeout
This is the new technology discussed at the intro to this post, head over to google.com/takeout and choose what you want to download, eventually all Google services should appear here, but for now you get Picassa, Google Contacts, Buzz, and Google+.
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